Def Leppard, the multiplatinum-selling 80s-era rock band, is in the midst of a 23 city stadium tour, playing to close to three quarters of a million fans. But the group’s guitarist, Phil Collen, has a more targeted audience in mind for his latest project, a graphic novel called Hysteria, due out in April from publisher Vault Comics. It’s just the latest example in the comics industry’s eternal quest for new customers, bringing together celebrities enthusiastic to try their hand in a new medium with the potential to tap into lucrative comics-adjacent fanbases and subcultures.
How did a member of one of rock’s most iconic bands find himself in the comics business? Part of it was a deal struck between the publisher and band management via mutual connections, and part because the project fit the guitarist’s passions as a storyteller with a longtime interest in the medium.
Collen, 66, takes his musical craft extremely seriously, waking early to hit the gym and keep himself in fighting shape for the band’s energetic performances, constantly recording on his mobile studio, and always looking for new sounds from his collection of guitars. He said that he sometimes unwinds on tours by writing short stories for his own amusement, but never had any particular ambitions for them.
“It’s just like writing songs,” Collen said in an interview in early September, ahead of Def Leppard’s show at T-Mobile Field in Seattle. “You do it as a creative expression. I travel everywhere and I’m very interested in the history, so I write these stories. They’re dark things; they come out a bit like Stephen King!”
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA – JUNE 06: Def Leppard’s Phil Collen performs at YouTube Presents Def Leppard At … [+]
Growing up in the UK in the 1960s, Collen said he became a fan of American comics like The Hulk and Silver Surfer, because they represented something colorful and exciting in a culture that didn’t offer a lot of pop culture entertainment. “People ask why there are so many British bands,” he said. “It’s because there was nothing else to do! American pop culture, whether movies, music or comics, was something different and I got really into that.”
Collen says that Vault Comics approached him to do a graphic novel associated with the Def Leppard brand, which gave him an opportunity to explore this side of his creativity. In collaboration with writer Eliot Rahal (Bleed Them Dry) and relatively new artist Alex Schlitz, Collen cooked up a tale of a guitar made from ancient, cursed wood that comes into the possession of a young musician in a punk rock band.
“The story is a metaphor for the obsession with fame and celebrity,” Collen said. “We’ve seen it throughout history down to the present. Celebrity, whether it’s a musician, actor, politician or whatever, makes people lose their minds. The guitar taps into this blind ambition.”
The 40 page sample that Vault provided shows a well-paced, well-drawn story centered on the character journey of Foz, lead singer of Darkside, who inherits the cursed instrument from her father. Frankly, if not for the Def Leppard branding and Collen’s participation, Hysteria would fit neatly on the shelf alongside the offerings of Image Comics, Boom! Studios, Mad Cave Studios, AWA, or any of the other small to midsize publishers publishing non-superhero comics in horror/fantasy/science fiction/thriller genres: comics that, while creatively appealing, rarely move the sales needle and fight to stand out on retailers’ shelves.
Page from Hysteria, by Phil Collen, Eliot Rahal and Alex Schlitz, Vault Comics
But it’s not just any comic. That association with one of the world’s biggest, longest-lived rock bands wins attention. If one Def Leppard fan in a hundred bought the Hysteria graphic novel, it would be one of the top sellers in the business. So Collen, despite not wanting to create some kind of corny tie-in, has woven a bit of Def Leppard into the texture of the story, and is releasing an EP of new music under the “Darkside” moniker in collaboration with a contemporary indie-rock band. To further kindle interest, Vault just announced an “issue zero” to tease and preview the graphic novel this month, and promises more intriguing promotions to keep interest in the book high after publication.
Comics have struck licensing deals with celebrities and musicians going back decades. Marvel memorably did a comic based on Kiss (an act perhaps uniquely suited to being adapted in a comic book) during the band’s heyday in the 1970s. Graphic novel publisher Z2 has built its entire business model on publishing work based on famous albums and musicians, often selling direct to consumers or in unusual venues for comics like music performances and record stores.
The recent example that set the template for success was BRZRKR, a violent adventure/fantasy series co-created by Keanu Reeves (along with writer Matt Kindt and artist Ron Garney), which raised over $1.45 million on Kickstarter, sold an astonishing 650,000 copies of its first issue, and is currently in media development in several formats. The publisher, Boom! Studios, was recently acquired by Penguin Random House.
Vault, which was founded in 2016 and recently closed a round of funding led by investors with deep connections in the entertainment and music industries, clearly has its eyes on that example. Hysteria and another project called Dying Inside based on the poetry of Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz due out September 24, are the first manifestations of the company’s strategy to crosspollinate music and comics.
“In the past with recording artist collaborations, you’ve seen a very straightforward name-image-likeness play, just taking the artist and shoving them into the pages of genre fiction and hoping it sells,” said Damain Wassel, cofounder and CEO of Vault Comics. “That’s very much not what we’re doing. We’re creating novel IP with every artist we’re partnering with, creating a great graphic novel with them, but also establishing a path to do all sorts of other stuff beyond that.”
Wassel also said that Vault is not crowdfunding its publishing projects, despite the potential to monetize fan interest directly, as Boom! Studios did with BRZRKR.
“We did a preorder campaign on our own platform, which achieved the same result in terms of predicting demand,” he said. “There’s a certain patina with crowdfunding that maybe our artists don’t want, and we want to make sure that we’re building this side of the business by having customers interact with our ecosystem, and not the ecosystem of a third party tech business.”
Collen says he’s looking forward to promoting the book at comic cons once the band is finished touring, and Wassel says Vault is pursuing a bunch of avenues to reach fans beyond the traditional business, including ads and partnerships in the venues where the band is playing. It’s a model the company hopes to repeat with upcoming projects featuring Metallica, The Beach Boys, Post Malone and others.
However the project turns out commercially, Collen says he very much enjoyed his first go-round as a comics creator. “It’s been a great experience artistically and a lot of fun,” he said. “With the whole backstory we’ve created, this could definitely do a sequel, or a series. It could go on as long as you wanted.”
